Source: AFP
Elon Musk’s X sued an advertising group and several major companies on Tuesday, accusing them of causing billions of dollars in damages by “illegally” boycotting the social media platform.
“We tried peace for 2 years, now it’s war,” the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX said on X, which he acquired in late 2022.
The antitrust lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, targets the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), Uniliver, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted, a Danish energy company.
It accuses the WFA, through an initiative known as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), of colluding with the companies and others to “collectively keep billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from X, formerly Twitter.
Some advertisers left Twitter after Musk’s buyout amid concerns about the level of control over content under the new ownership and Musk’s own controversial reasoning on the site.
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X CEO Linda Yaccarino, in a video posted on the platform on Tuesday, said X was the victim of a “systematic illegal boycott.”
“They conspired to boycott X which threatens our ability to thrive in the future,” Yaccarino said. “No small group of people should be able to monopolize what they earn.”
X is seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages.
The lawsuit was filed a day after Musk filed a lawsuit in California against OpenAI, accusing its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of betraying the AI company’s founding mission.
Musk invested in San Francisco-based OpenAI in 2015, but left three years later.
It accuses OpenAI, Altman and Brockman of fraud, conspiracy and false advertising.
Source: AFP
